Hello all,
I grew up in the 'thumb' of michigan on a small farm, but also worked for the neighbor down the road. My late father sold the farm while I was serving overseas (what a shock that was). I am very familiar with JD tractors and implements of the past. My neighbor had about two dozen different tractors, about a third of them were JD, some IH, Case and Ford. We only had four tractors, all classic JD; Model A, B, AR, and 620. I loved them all, but my favorite was the AR! I"ve done some searches for a similar model, but have not seen any. Ours had a 'cab' built onto it, where the sides were detachable canvas pieces. But by the time I was old enough to drive it, the canvas was no longer used. It was just the steel overhead cover and side pillars/mounts. It did have a glass windshield! Anyway, it was our 'workhorse' used mainly for field cultivating and plowing (2-bottom). Once it had to be overhauled as my older brother had caused it to overheat until it seized up! Right after, we installed a belt-driven water pump from the fan shaft. I don't know why, but we ran this tractor on fuel oil, after it was started on gasoline. I remember helping my father fill the tank, pail after pail from a gravity fed tank in the toolshed. The reserve tractor tank held gasoline. It was fun spinning the heavy flywheel to start it, opening the little cylinder valves to relieve the compression, then closing them after it started. The Model A we had was also manual start like that. The B and the 620 were electric start. The B was the all purpose tractor, used more than the others. It had attachable implements like a cultivator and hay mower. The A had a hydraulic front-end loader attached to it, but was also used for pulling/running the single-row cornpicker with a wagon behind that. The 620 was mainly used for the hay-baler and other field cultivating chores.
What impressed me so much about all these tractors was how long they lasted w/o much maintenance. Very strong, durable and dependable. I"m sure they don't make them like that anymore!
I'm not into farming anymore, but have a lot of great memories with JD tractors. I love going to tractor shows to watch, look and listen to them.
Bruce